Okay, the election. Right at the top, my reaction to Joe Blahden's victory is not joy or excitement. It is relief. The very fact that I refer to him as Joe Blahden should give you a sense of how excited I am by his becoming president, but the prospect of, the threat to our very continuance as a democracy presented by, a second term for Tweetie-pie was too frightening to countenance. So I am tremendously relieved by the result.But I also fear that just like what happened in 2008, we will decide that the arrival of a Democrat in the White House means the work is done and just like we did then, we will tie our star to the new administration and embrace the idea that their policies mark the outside limit not only of what is politically possible but what is politically acceptable, what is open for discussion, what can even be on the table.
And that is exactly what will happen if we don't push back hard.
Forget the presidency for a moment. After getting the candidate they wanted an running the races they wanted, in both the Senate and House, the Democrats did worse than predicted. Not only did they not win the Senate - unless, that is, they pull off a long-shot double win in the Georgia run-offs on January 5 and reach a 50-50 break - they actually lost six or more seats in the House after thinking they could flip up to a dozen.
So what happened during a conference call of the House Democratic caucus two days after the election? Nancy Pelosi and her top lieutenants along with so-called "centrists" knew exactly who to blame: progressives.
It wasn't that they themselves did anything wrong, it wasn't that the DNC did anything wrong, it couldn't have been their campaigns were screwed up or poorly run or didn't address the actual concerns of their constituents or ignored widely popular proposals in favor of pleasing party bigwigs and big donors, oh, no. It was all because some candidates dared breathe the word "socialism" and because some people, not even candidates but some other people out there somewhere, used the phrase "defund the police" and those became the basis for GOPper attack ads which, apparently, neither those "centrists" nor the entire structure of the national Democratic party were capable of refuting or countering.
So no, they didn't do anything wrong. It was all the progressives' fault. Not just progressive candidates, but progressives in general. All of who, apparently, should just shut up.
Listen Up, people! Get it through your heads: The Democratic party establishment is not on our side. Not on the side of average working people, or of the unemployed, or of the poor, or of the struggling, or of the victims of discrimination and bigotry, or even of the future of this plant.
Yes, certainly there are individuals in the party who have been and are fighting and will continue to fight the good fight and certainly, there are individuals who were or are on our side on specific issues. But as a group, as a whole, the establishment Democratic party is not. They are on our side insofar as and only insofar as its necessary to protect their power, their positions, and their perquisites.
They'll ignore us, fight us, resist us, and then for the sake of their own benefit, they'll try to take credit for what we gained by our efforts.
After his victory in the 2020 Nevada caucuses, Bernie Sanders tweeted of the Republican and Democratic party establishments "They can't stop us." In response, longtime Democratic party strategist Joe Lockhart tweeted "The Democratic establishment gave us civil rights, voting rights, the assault weapons ban, social security and Medicare. What have you done Senator?"
Hey Lockhart: You didn't "give" us anything! We won it. All of it. Every one of those things came as the result of years, usually decades, of organizing, marching, protesting, lobbying, petitions, letters, phone calls, court suits, civil disobedience, and yes, voting. We did it. Not you. So I turn the question around: Can you, can anyone in the establishment Democratic party, name one gain that has come without significant outside pressure? Can you name one advance that genuinely originated in the upper echelons of the establishment Democratic party? You can't because you didn't "give" us squat.
And you're not going to "give" us single-payer health insurance, a living wage, or a livable future for ourselves and our children. Remember Nancy Pelosi snidely calling the Green New Deal "The green dream, or whatever they call it, nobody knows what it is, but they're for it, right?" Remember that? None of that will happen, none of those gains will be made, without us constantly, constantly, pushing you, taking what we gain and coming back again and again for more.
They are not on our side.
They are not on the side of the underdogs, the victims, the outsiders, the have-nots, the oppressed the hungry the landless. And they never will be.
They are not on our side. And they will continue to not be on our side, to ignore us, to dismiss us, to deny us, to deny us even when we represent the majority, as we do on a whole laundry list of issues from health care to the environment to the economy and back again. It will go on until we make it impossible for them to continue to do so.
There is yet much to be gained, much to strive for, allies and alliances to be made and lost, and undoubtedly many unhappy compromises to be made along the way.
So can they - at least some of them - be useful allies on particular causes at particular times? Yes, surely. So they still should be lobbied, petitioned, pressured. But do it knowing that when those causes are pushed to the point where they really impact the prerogatives of the powerful, you will suddenly find your assistance is no longer required, your counsel is no longer desired, your opinions are no longer regarded as having merit.
Can sufficient political and social pressure move them beyond that point, move in ways and to extents they would prefer to avoid? Absolutely. But again, know going in what will be required. Because never forget: They are not on our side.
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